MOVING FORWARD The Central Park jogger runs strong two decades later.

[underpants]

Each June, Trisha Meili returns to the place where she almost died 20 years ago. She speaks to 4,000 or so athletes—some on prosthetic limbs or in wheelchairs, some with transplanted organs, others tethered to runners who'll help them along—gathered at the Hope & Possibility five-miler in New York City's Central Park. Meili, 48, has no visible disability. She serves as a guide, aiding a wounded war vet or a brain-injury survivor. Nonetheless, her presence at the start reinforces the message of the day.

"I say something like, 'Many of us here have been knocked down by something, but here we are and look at what we can do,'" Meili says. "I have learned that with love and support, there's hope, and from hope, possibility emerges."

The Long Road Back
After the attack, Meili's doctors, family, and employer guarded her privacy so she could return to a normal life. But eventually, she decided to share what she had learned from her recovery. Meili changed careers, from investment banking to advocacy work, and serves on the boards of the Achilles Track Club and Gaylord Hospital, the facility that treated her. She began giving speeches in the health and sexual-assault advocacy fields, and in 2003, she wrote a memoir called I Am the Central Park Jogger: A Story of Hope and Possibility. The book was published just as Traum was organizing a race in Central Park. "I had suggested calling it the Trisha Meili Five-Miler," Traum says. "But she felt it shouldn't be about her, that it should be about hope and possibility."


Running, Meili says, is a meditative time for her, and sometimes she uses it to remind herself of the importance of the present moment. "During my recovery, I wasn't caught up in what had happened, a past I couldn't change," she often tells audiences. "Wallowing in the past or worrying about the future was not going to help. Working in the present was the right place to focus my energy."
http://www.runnersworld.com/article/0,7120,s6-243-297--13140-0,00.html

http://runnersworld.coverleaf.com/runnersworld/200906/?pg=22
http://www.centralparkjogger.com/

[REACTIVATED IN CT]

1. She is an amazing person.

I have heard her speak at Gaylord.

[MissWaverly]

2. thanks for posting this

she sounds like an incredible person

[Archae]

3. One aspect of this pisses me off.

No mention of the 5 boys coerced into confessing to the crime.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Park_Jogger